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Husband of Toronto doctor Elana Shamji appears in court charged with her murder

Last weekend, after a busy day at the Ontario Medical Association council meeting, physician Elana Fric-Shamji settled in for a meal with some of her colleagues.

Dinner attendees described the 40-year-old doctor and mother of three as being in a vibrant, joyful mood. She told entertaining stories, shared her excitement over a recent joke tweet of hers that went viral and was published in media outlets.

And she volunteered some difficult news: She had filed for divorce the previous day.

“She openly discussed her impending divorce and chose to look at it as ‘a new beginning,’ ” said Darren Cargill, a fellow doctor also attending the OMA council weekend, where she was happy and “even giddy at times.”

Six days later, at a press conference late Friday night, Toronto police announced Fric-Shamji’s body had been found near the underpass of a bridge beside the West Humber River in Vaughan.

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Her husband — the father of her kids and a neurosurgeon with Toronto Western Hospital — has been charged with first-degree murder.

Mohammed Shamji, 40, made a brief court appearance at Old City Hall Saturday morning. Dressed in a white prison jumpsuit, Shamji stood in the prisoners’ box looking nervous and solemn. At one point, he glanced over his right shoulder to family members seated in the gallery.

He was remanded into custody until his next court appearance Dec. 20. Shamji’s lawyer, Liam O’Connor, declined to comment.

The couple’s children are currently with Fric-Shamji’s mother, according to police.

Toronto homicide investigator Det.Sgt. Steve Ryan told reporters police have spoken to witnesses and believed there had been an altercation in the couple’s home.

The discovery of the body came after Fric-Shamji was reported missing; her mother had reportedly not heard from her since Wednesday, and she didn’t show up to work at Scarborough General Hospital on Thursday or Friday morning. Shamji’s husband did not report her missing, according to police.

On Thursday afternoon, York Regional Police were called to a bridge beside the West Humber River where the body of a woman had been discovered. A post-mortem autopsy in Toronto Friday confirmed Fric-Shamji’s identity.

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According to police, she was strangled and suffered blunt force trauma of some kind.

Friday night, at a coffee shop near Lakeshore Rd. E. and Highway 10 in Mississauga, Mohammed Shamji was arrested without incident. Early Saturday, police had sealed off the couple’s North York home as they awaited a search warrant.

Repeatedly described as a “brilliant” physician by colleagues and friends, Fric-Shamji was on staff at Scarborough hospital’s family practice teaching unit.

Fric-Shamji went to the University of Ottawa for medical school after which she received a master’s of public policy degree from Duke University in North Carolina. At the Family Medicine Teaching Unit, her research interests were women’s and preventative health, and family and community medicine.

Mohammed Shamji is an assistant professor of surgery with the University of Toronto’s faculty of medicine, and a specialist in spinal surgery. According to his biography, he is a graduate of several prestigious university programs, including Yale University, and completed his neurosurgery residency program at the University of Ottawa.

As news of Fric-Shamji’s death spread Saturday, Ontario’s medical community was sent reeling. In a statement Saturday, OMA President Virginia Walley described her as a “talented family physician who was active in many efforts to improve the health-care system.”

“Ontario’s doctors are a close-knit community, and we are all stunned … At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with her family, her friends, and her colleagues,” Walley wrote.

“I most recently spoke to her at our (OMA) fall council, where she enthusiastically discussed her work to help advance the interests of physicians and their patients.”

Dr. Nadia Alam, who knew Fric-Shamji through a doctors’ online network and their mutual involvement in the OMA, said her death has been met with “widespread shock and grief.”

“She was a big part of various physician Facebook forums, so many docs knew of her, if not her directly. And many enjoyed her sense of humour and kindness,” Alam said.

Lindsay Bisset, a fellow doctor whose kids attend the same school as the Shamji children, described her as “passionate about her children, her work and her physical fitness.

“She adored her kids and was a terrific mom. The type who believes in family time together and was very connected with her kids,” Bisset said.

She had a witty, silly side, too. In medical school, she was a “dynamo,” remembered fellow student Maggie Gordon, and she could get away with swearing and making jokes that “just brushed the edge of appropriate.”

Both Fric-Shamji and her husband were avid social media users, often posting photos of each other and accolades about professional accomplishments. In April, they travelled to Dubai for a spine surgery conference Mohammed Shamji was attending.

“Thank you Dubai for your beautiful architecture, tasty food, exotic desert, and kind people. It was a trip of a lifetime. Now onto the most wonderful place of all — home,” Fric-Shamji wrote on a photo posted online.

The pair also often posted about their mutual love of fitness, particularly running and the practice of Jiu-Jitsu. On a photo from earlier this year depicting her husband in his Jiu-Jitsu uniform, Fric-Shamji wrote: “Two-striped Dr.Mo - can break your neck and then FIX it!”

Brendan Byrne, a friend of Fric-Shamji who described her as “brilliant” said the photos suggest you can’t believe everything you see.

“We never really know what goes on behind closed doors or the facade of a happy selfie,” he said.

Dr. Daisy Fung, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Alberta, said a tight-knit, across-Canada group of physicians are now arranging a memorial. They are hoping to arrange a trust fund for the three children and a GoFundMe page.

“We hope to do something in her memory, and all those women affected by domestic violence,” Fung said. “We are all deeply saddened and shocked at this tragedy and our concern also lies with her mother and her three beautiful children.”

Sonia Elliott said she was a former patient of Fric-Shamji’s when she operated a new family doctor practice, which Elliot believes the doctor did to “be more available for her family.”

She was a conscientious doctor who had a way with kids, coming across as a type ‘A’ personality and a mother who was very family oriented.

Elliot said she was disappointed at the “very sudden” announcement that Fric-Shamji was closing her practice to move to Toronto for her husband’s new job.

“Clearly a lot of work had gone into mounting this very young practice so a sudden dissolution seemed strange to say the least. And it was at that point that it was hard not to consider, even briefly, what the balance in their relationship was like,” she wrote in an email to the Star.

Dr. Lesley Barron, an Ontario general surgeon, met Fric-Shamji for the first time last weekend, at the OMA council where she was a Toronto district delegate.

Fric-Shamji struck Barron as “lovely, intelligent and funny,” and Barron noticed she had also been really active in terms of bringing forward motions at the council meeting.

At dinner, the two discussed work, patients and Fric-Shamji’s pending divorce.

“We discussed that sometimes divorce is a good thing,” Barron said. “She said a weight was lifted off her now she had decided to go ahead with leaving her husband.”

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